Finding relationships is easy... Keeping them is the real game.
That's what I'm learning in my first one. It's not easy. Our rival schools are an hour apart, my best friend's turning secretive, my parents are controlling, and my brother's still an a...
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Harper's situation and her snoring left me unable to fall asleep. So, I followed my go-to distraction and started cooking.
I tore apart Mom's kitchen in the process. It was small, but her weakness for kitchen gadgets left a lot of options at my creative disposal, and I raided her pantry's dry ingredients.
There was no shortage of homemade protein powder recipes online, but I found no recipe requiring less than a full cup for Logan's protein range. Most recipes used milk powder, which I substituted with powdered eggs, but then I dried out hard-boiled egg yolks to increase the omega threes. Yolks had less protein, so I kept the powdered eggs.
My eyes blinked at how quickly the toasted almonds, walnuts, pecans, peanuts, soybeans, sunflower, flax, and chia seeds, steel-cut oats, powdered eggs, and my dried yolks became a pale yellow-tan snow flurry in the blender.
The mix turned finer through a sifter. I pinched a taste test. Tasteless. "Perfect."
With the 'Homemade Protein Powder' recipe and its nutritional information per quarter cup scribbled down on a recipe card, I snapped a picture and sent it to Mason.
Me: for the grumpy guinea pig Me: [ image attached ]
Mason: Twice as much protein as my go-to stuff? What does it taste like?
Me: Tasteless. Logan won't notice a thing.
Mason: 👍
After replicating the recipe enough to fill a container, my eyes found Mom's new spiralizer. A few humbling attempts flung pieces of yellow squash and zucchini on me and the counter but, finally, I curled out yellow and green spiral circles. Pan-cooked in butter and a little salt, they were a slimy substitute for pasta noodles.
"Ellie?" Mom's sleepy voice spoke up behind me. Clutching her robe closed, she blinked under the light. "Why are you cooking so late?"
"Couldn't sleep," I said over my shoulder. "It's only nine."
"Between you and the noise outside..." Confusion filled her voice. "Where's Jake?"
"Upstairs, why?"
She leaned over the sink, frowning at whatever she saw out the window. "Brody McCallister is mowing the yard."
"Huh?" I stopped and listened. Sure enough, a lawnmower buzzed outside. "Brody's mowing... our yard? At night?"
What the hell? That was Jake's job.
She shrugged, frowning at the state of her kitchen as Brody passed by the window, pushing the mower. How could he see where he was going? "Guess Jake's subcontracting out his chores."
Night-time chore labor sounded like mike hazing, which no one deserved but especially not shy, sweet Brody. "No, he's not."
The door banged behind me before I heard Mom's answer. Running over the dewy grass, I waved my arms and charged at Brody. Even in the moonlight, I could see sweat shining on his face. "Brody!"
